One of the major problems of political life in this age where everything is available almost at an instant is the sense of familiarity, even dullness, of policy proposals. Take, for example, the idea of a third tax rate for high earners as mooted at the Labour Party National Conference yesterday by Eamon Gilmore. It’s [...]

Sinn Fein has produced a substantial and positive contribution to the debate on creating and saving jobs in our recessionary economy. ‘Getting Ireland Back to Work’ contains more than 80 proposals covering a range of employment-related subjects: job retention, investing in our indigenous base, education and training, consumer spending, etc. If there’s a bit of [...]

In case you missed it Michael Taft was talking on Prime Time last night about the importance of maintaining capital projects in the National Development Plan in order to stimulate the economy. Taking the other point of view was ERSI economist Edgar Morgenroth, who argued that rather than money being put into the NDP it [...]

Dear Sarah
I read with interest your recent Irish Times column - ‘Nemesis for decades of cosy consensus on tax‘. I was particularly struck by the following:
‘When asked who should pay tax so that there’s enough money to fund the most generous social welfare payments in the EU, we are back to - you’ve guessed it [...]

Paula Clancy, director of TASC, has written an articulate and forcefully response to David Quinn’s column in last Friday’s Irish Independent. In that article Quinn claimed that ‘out of control public spending’ combined with the poor enforcement of existing regulation was to blame for the current crisis, but not, to the extent that it has [...]

There is a sense that, if we could just overcome these temporary setbacks (recession, credit crunch, low export demand) then we might find our way back to a more benign economic climate. There’s very little sense that this is a ‘game-changer’, as Liam, a reader of this blog, put it. For instance, the Sunday Tribune [...]

In his third post on competitiveness at the progressive economy@tasc blog (previous two here and here), ICTU economists Paul Sweeney asks if a reduction in labour costs, even unit labour costs, will reduce prices for goods and services throughout the economy - the measure needed, the economists tell us, it improve Ireland’s competitiveness. Or will [...]

Mark Conroy, who kindly posted my essay ‘Towards a New Economic Narrative’ on Indymedia, noted my comment that it was growing quickly out-of-date and asked:
‘In what way is it “out of date”, and what would an updated version of it look like?’
Fair question. With new projections from Ulster Bank suggesting we are entering into a [...]

Indymedia has kindly posted my article ‘Towards A New Economic Narrative’. But I fear it is quickly growing out of date. The speed at which the economy is melting down means we are running hard and still not able to keep up. The article was written in November. Today we are in a much different [...]

Jim O’Leary rightfully points out our tendency to view our problems in isolation from the rest of the world - as if we were somehow unique. He suggests we look abroad, to other examples. He selects my home state California to see what lessons we can draw. His principle is sound, his selection curious.
It’s not [...]